


the back page

by gracieminabox



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Denial, Everyone Is Gay, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 22:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15129083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracieminabox/pseuds/gracieminabox
Summary: Chris makes two lists. One is a lot longer than the other. This creates complications.(Pre-"and we run")





	the back page

**Author's Note:**

> In all of the universes in which I write, Phil Boyce's birthday is today, July 1. I never would've imagined such a comparatively minor character would become so important to me, but here we are, and he has. I wanted to write something to honor him, so I figured Chris itemizing his amazingness would be a good one :)

“Hmm.”

Chris looked up from his hands. _“‘Hmm’_ what?”

Across the low coffee table that separated them, Chris’ therapist took off her glasses and tapped the tip of one arm against her lips. “Have you ever considered the possibility that you might be in love with Phil?”

 _“What?”_ Chris exhaled on a breathy, high-pitched laugh. “Ebony. I’m not gay.”

Ebony shrugged. “So?”

“What do you mean ‘so’? Isn’t that kind of a prerequisite for what you’re suggesting?”

“Not necessarily, no,” Ebony suggested. “Come on, Chris. You’re a sociologist. You know this isn’t an either/or thing.”

“Yeah, but…” Chris protested, trailing off when he realized he hadn’t thought about the rest of the sentence.

“I’m not saying you _are_ in love with him; I’m asking if it’s something you’ve _considered._ I gather the answer is no.”

“Yeah. I mean, no. I mean…” _When did my voice revert to a stage before my balls dropped?_ Chris cleared his throat. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you don’t talk about him like a best friend,” Ebony clarified. “You don’t even talk about him like a brother. You talk about Hyeon like that, certainly. You talk about people like Areum and Laura in terms akin to sibling relationships or particularly close friendships. But with Phil, it just seems different, like he satisfies some other need in you, something deeper and more intimate.”

Chris blinked. “He does, I guess,” he said slowly, deliberately ignoring the word _intimate_ in that sentence. “But I mean...isn’t that the point of having multiple friends? That they satisfy different needs of yours?”

Ebony inclined her head. “I suppose. That’s a fair point.”

Chris let out a steady breath. “I’m not in love with Phil.”

Ebony nodded, her face a typical therapist’s mask of neutrality. “Okay.”

They moved on to discussing Jim’s adjustment to a new school and apartment living. Chris’ mind was mostly absent for that conversation.

~

Chris went home after his session, ordered Chinese food for him and Jim (at least it had vegetables in it), and went to bed not long after Jim did. He did not, however, go to _sleep_.

_“Have you ever considered the possibility that you might be in love with Phil?”_

_“you might be in love with Phil”_

_“in love with Phil”_

Damn Ebony for putting that dumbass idea into his head. _Damn her._

At one-thirty, Chris flicked on his bedside lamp, pulled a weather-beaten green-covered spiral notebook out of his desk drawer, and uncapped a pen.

_Reasons I’m not in love with my best friend_

Chris paused, thinking for a moment, then began writing twice as fast to compensate for taking that moment to think.

 _1\. I like women. I’ve never been into a guy like that._  
_2\. I like women so much I used to be married to one._  
_3\. I’m close with Hyeon too and nobody’s ever said something like that about me and him._  
_4\. I’m a sociologist with a Ph.D.; I would know by now._  
_5\. Almost none of my friends are straight; I would know by now._  
_6\. I’ve been in therapy for years; I would know by now._  
_7\. I went to Berkeley for god’s sake; I would know by now._

Something that Chris was burying deep, deep, deep under fathoms of water in his mind - perhaps originating from a river in Egypt? - knew that it was kind of a shitty list, but its existence comforted him enough to let him fall into an uneasy sleep.

(He remembered the next morning that he had an adolescent boy in the apartment with him now and should probably find a better hiding place for that list.)

~

Phil came over the next night. It was a Friday; Jim and Chris didn’t have school the next day and Phil was off call. A perfect opportunity for sloth.

Phil made spaghetti and the three of them watched crappy movies. Chris was properly horrified that Jim had never seen how terrible/awesome “Armageddon” was; Phil was properly horrified that Chris was considering showing that _“two-hour violation of Newton’s laws”_ to his son. Chris noted that this statement of disdain did not stop Phil from joining them, with Jim perching on the floor between the legs of the two adults on the couch.

Toward the end of the movie, as Bruce Willis said goodbye to his daughter and prepared to blow himself up to save the world, Chris distinctly heard sniffling to his left. He peered into his periphery, then turned his head slowly; there were two shiny tears making their way down Phil’s cheeks.

“Are. You. _Serious,”_ Chris burst.

“What?” Phil said wetly, wiping his cheek.

“You’re crying at a _two-hour violation of Newton’s laws,”_ Chris crowed.

 _“Shh!”_ Jim chided them from the floor.

“It’s _sad,”_ Phil protested. “He’s about to _die_ to save the _world!”_

Chris giggled like a schoolgirl, then handed Phil his spaghetti sauce-stained paper napkin to blot his tears.

~

At three o’clock the following morning, under the cover of darkness and with only the streetlights from outside filtering into his bedroom, Chris turned the page of _Reasons I’m not in love with my best friend_ to the back side and wrote, in unusually small print, _1\. He cries at terrible sad movies._

He did not give that page a title.

~

The back page filled up suspiciously quickly.

Two days after the Armageddon tears, Chris found Phil in Jim’s room, talking to him in a low voice - about the death of Jim’s mom, Chris realized. Jim was crying, but he was smiling through his tears. _2\. He’s so good with Jim, and Jim loves him._

The following week, Chris had to bail Phil out of jail after he was arrested at a women’s rights march. _3\. He stands up for what he believes in, no matter what._

Before long, Chris had to shrink his handwriting down as small as it would go to fit it on the lines.

 _4\. He loves dogs._  
_5\. His family is wonderful._  
_6\. He always calms me down when I freak out._  
_7\. He makes me laugh._  
_8\. He makes Jim laugh._  
_9\. He’s a good cook._  
_10\. He can’t sing to save his life but he does it anyway._  
_11\. He’s incredibly confident in who he is._  
_12\. He’s the gentlest person I’ve ever known._  
_13\. He’s such a good doctor._  
_14\. That little dimple in his cheek._  
_15\. How his hair flops over his eyes._  
_16\. How he has such strong opinions about brands of spices and razors._  
_17\. How long his eyelashes are._  
_18\. How he doesn’t believe in astrology but still says he acts like a Cancer.  
19\. He smells so good. Like cinnamon._

He only filled the back page out at night, when he could barely see in the low light, and he sandwiched the notebook between his mattress and boxspring to hide it. He only used pencil. It felt vaguely pornographic.

~

When he filled up the back page, including the margins, the header, and the partially-cut-off line at the bottom of the page, and still had only seven items on the front - none of them particularly ironclad - Chris started to worry.

By which he meant _panic._

~

Days and weeks passed. Chris got up, got Jim to school, went to work, graded papers, spent time with his friends - Phil included - and tried to imitate a functional human being. He went to therapy every week, but all he and Ebony really talked about was how he was doing mood-wise at work and how he and Jim were adjusting to the adoption. Phil was only ever mentioned in passing; Ebony never brought up Chris’ sexual orientation, and neither did he.

Chris figured that it would _probably_ be a good idea to tell Ebony about the back page, and about the fact that he was having immense amounts of trouble looking at himself in the mirror to brush his teeth or comb his hair, and about the fact that his looks at Phil might be lingering a little too long to qualify as platonic at this point...but he also couldn’t bring himself to make his tongue form those words.

He liked and trusted Ebony, a _lot,_ but he also knew he couldn’t bear to air these thoughts into the open universe. Not yet.

~

It was late on a Saturday night. Chris had dropped Jim off at the Sulus’ restaurant - Jim and Hikaru had decided on a last-minute sleepover - and somehow, Chris got roped into dish duty in the back while the boys talked and ate chicken nuggets in the front.

Hyeon Sulu poked his head into the kitchen. “Babe, I’m gonna run to Safeway; how much sesame oil do we need?”

Areum spoke from behind the door of the industrial freezer. “I put it on the list, Hyeon.”

For just a moment, Chris’ hands faltered in the soapy water. (He had recently become hypersensitive to certain words. _List. Notebook. Dimples. Phil.)_

“Huh?” Hyeon called.

Areum muttered a swear in a foreign language under her breath, then called, “The _list,_ Hyeon, the _list!”_

That...was not helping. Chris’ hands jolted again. A steak knife skittered across his palm.

 _“Shit!”_ he spat, grabbing his hand and pressing into it.

Areum ran to him, dropping a package of frozen chicken thighs on the counter, and looked at Chris’ hand. “What’d you do?”

Chris shrugged weakly. “It just slipped.” It was pretty superficial and barely bleeding.

“You were having him wash _knives?”_ Hyeon boggled at his wife. “You know he can’t be trusted with sharp objects.”

Areum rolled her eyes at Hyeon and walked Chris out to the storage closet, where the first aid kit was kept. Chris sat in mildly humiliated silence while Areum cleaned, Neosporin-ed, and bandaged his hand. Before he could thank her, she looked at him closely.

“What’s going on?” she asked sincerely. It was a very Areum way of asking that question - simple, direct, but also leaving no room for obfuscation. When Areum Sulu wanted answers, she got them.

She was also the closest thing Chris had ever had to a sister. _Maybe I can trust her with this._

“Please promise me you won’t tell anybody,” Chris mumbled lowly, not making eye contact with her. “Not even Hyeon. _Please.”_

Areum nodded. Her eyes were serious and sincere. “I promise.”

Chris took a deep breath, trying to figure out what the words _were_ that he’d been swallowing for three months. “Back in August,” he began, “Ebony asked me in a session if I thought I might...have feelings for Phil.” He paused and swallowed audibly. “More than platonic feelings, I mean.”

“Mmhmm,” Areum acknowledged neutrally.

“And I told her no,” Chris said, “which was true, I didn’t think so, I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I even went home and wrote a list of reasons I definitely _didn’t_ have feelings for Phil.”

In his peripheral vision, Chris saw Areum purse her lips in an obvious suppression of a smile. He hated her for a moment, just a little, in the way a little brother hates his big sister.

“But then,” Chris made himself say, “I started another list...and it...I mean...it has _more_ things on it.”

Areum let a pause linger in the air. “I don't follow.”

Chris let out a lungful of air and tried not to look down at his chest, where he just _knew_ his heart was beating so hard it was _visible,_ and said, “I have some evidence to suggest that I maybe have some non-brotherly feelings for him.”

This time, Areum couldn’t hold back her smile. Chris looked up and frowned at her in puzzlement, but Areum patted his cheek gently and said something sweetly in Korean.

“What does that mean?” Chris asked.

“It roughly translates to ‘homeboy stupid,’” Areum said. Before Chris could object, Areum continued. “Christopher. Every single person who’s seen the two of you together at _any point_ in the last ten years has had that evidence.”

Chris blinked.

“Me. Hyeon. Hikaru. Jim. Ebony. Laura. People Phil works with. People _you_ work with. Regular customers in the restaurant. _Everybody.”_ Her smile grew. “You love him. You’ve loved him _forever,_ Chris.”

Chris tried to absorb this information and failed. “Why didn’t any of you _tell me?”_

“Because it wasn’t ours to tell,” Areum answered seamlessly. “Because this was for you to find out on your own. This doesn’t belong to us.”

“Well, I’m finding out on my own, and now _I’m getting hives from it,”_ Chris squeaked.

“Oh, Chris,” Areum sighed, sitting on an upturned janitorial bucket. “Look. Phil’s good at calming you down when you’re in a bad place. So tell me what’s calming about Phil.”

Chris white-knuckled the desk he was sitting on and looked at Areum. “He’s smart,” he began. “He’s kind. He doesn’t judge anybody, ever.”

Areum nodded encouragingly. “What else?”

Chris looked down. His grip on the desk was loosening, his heart rate starting to tick downward. “He makes me laugh,” he continued. “He can think straight when I can’t.”

“Pun unintended,” Areum added. “Sorry,” she added when Chris gave her a dirty look.

“He just...he makes everything better,” Chris continued. “He makes _me_ better. He takes something that feels like the worst thing in the world and makes me feel like maybe there’s some hope in it, just waiting to be found.”

Areum smiled. “Sounds like he’d be a good person to talk to about _this.”_

Chris swallowed. She was right. “I hate it when you’re right.”

“I’m always right,” Areum said, standing up and dropping a kiss on Chris’ forehead.

~

“So, um,” Chris began, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Remember what you said a few months ago about me maybe having some feelings for Phil?”

Ebony nodded. “I remember.”

Chris’ hands shook. “Um,” he said, thrusting out the notebook in his hand, “look.”

Ebony looked. “Okay?” she said quizzically.

Chris pursed his lips hard. “Turn the page.”

She did, and took a much longer look.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. _Oh.”_ Chris buried his head in his hands. “Tell me what to do, O Therapist.”

Ebony smiled and handed the notebook back to him. “Yeah, you know that’s not the way this works,” she said smartly. “Let’s talk it out and figure out a roadmap for you.”

~

 

_Fifteen years later_

 

~

“What _is_ this?”

Chris turned away from attempting to fold the fitted sheet, his eyes going saucer-wide at the sight of Phil holding up a battered green notebook.

“Oh my god,” Chris whispered, taking it from Phil and flipping through to find a fragile, dog-eared page. “Oh my god.”

“Is that one of your old journals?” Phil asked, sitting next to Chris on the bed.

“Not just any old journal,” Chris said lowly. “Read this.”

Phil took the notebook. “August 29, 2002,” he quoted. “Reasons I’m not in love with my best friend.” Phil looked up at Chris and raised an eyebrow.

“Famous last words,” Chris muttered, feeling himself flush lightly.

“Chris?”

“Hmm?”

“All of these reasons _suck.”_

“Well _obviously._ They were _wrong.”_ Chris snickered. “Turn the page.”

Phil did, and took a sharp intake of breath. “What the…”

Chris blushed, looking at his crudely-scrawled, twentysomething handwriting in pencil, outlining what ultimately wound up being only the tiniest fraction of reasons why Chris definitely, absolutely, unflinchingly was in love with his best friend.

“I didn’t know how to handle the idea that I loved you, so I tried to talk myself out of it,” Chris clarified. “Which...obviously didn’t work.”

Phil shook his head. “I know it’s not a terrible sad movie, but I’m gonna cry anyway.”

Chris kissed his temple. “Go for it,” he whispered, gesturing down at the notebook. “It’s at the top of the list of things I love about you.”

**Author's Note:**

> MASSIVE THANKS to my dear friend Kenzie (TooNerdyToHandle on AO3) for letting me borrow her children, OCs Hyeon and Areum Sulu, with whom I have wholeheartedly fallen in love!


End file.
